Biography of Mzi KHUMALO

He is one of SA' s best-known businessmen. In the past 10 years he has built a corporate and personal empire consisting of Metallon Corporation and Mawenzi - the group that houses his personal investments. He's been a Chairman of Mintek since 2004. After serving 12 years on Robben Island for political offences, Mzi Khumalo joined McCarthy Holdings in 1991. In 1994 he founded Capital Alliance, he sold his interest in 1997 and became a shareholder in JCI. Mzi is an ex-director of Anglo American Corporation, Telkom SA, McCarthy Retail, Momentum Life, Southern Mining Corporation and the Financial Markets Advisory Board.

He is married to Khosi and has a daughter.

Mr Khumalo, a prominent South African businessman, is active in the financial services and mining industries of South Africa, and has served on the board of a number of companies, including Anglo American Corporation of South Africa.He founded Capital Alliance Limited and is currently Chairman of the Mawenzi Group of companies and a director of Mintek as well as a trustee of the World Wildlife Fund.
Born in the Durban township of Kwamashu in 1995, the youngest of eleven children of a policeman and a cleaner, who died when he was only nine, Mzi Khumalo began earning his living at a very early age, tinplating recycled oil cans. He then became a petrol pump attendant and learned car mechanics. He was soon well known for his resourcefulness. Some of his friends became students and African National Congress militants and they often turned to him to keep a lookout, provide a car or pass arms. "I was never really politically aware until I was much older. I think the ANC spotted me and recruited me rather than me joining out of conviction."

Trained abroad in the logistics of urban guerrilla warfare, Mr Khumalo was arrested in 1978 and sent to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was already imprisoned. "I came out in 1990 and started my life again from scratch after 12 years in prison. Many were broken, but some people are stronger as a result."

While in prison, he took a degree in economics. Unlike his comrades who then craved political posts, the clever township boy still had a taste for business. He became a broker, going on to form his own management consultancy. Six years after leaving prison, he found enough investors among the rising black middle class, including insurance companies with the pension funds of 300,000 Blacks, to raise the $500m needed to take a majority stake in JCI, South Africa’s fourth largest gold producer.

He thus became the first Black to take control of South Africa’s legendary mining company, the pioneer of the gold-rich "Rand" founded in 1888 by Barney Barnato who bought all the land that was needed to build the city of Johannesburg, having already made a fortune from Kimberley diamonds.